This Government is a record-breaking Government for all the wrong reasons. There have been record rents, record house prices and record numbers of people who are homeless. The average price of a residential property sold in 2025 was €426,000. I could not believe the figure when I saw it. It is eight times the average income at the moment. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is now more than €2,000 per month and the availability of homes to rent has halved since pre-Covid-19 pandemic times. Some 16,600 people are currently languishing in homelessness; 5,200 of them are children and 402 people have died in homelessness in Dublin in five years. For much of the rest of the country that figure is not even measured.

The truth is that the Government is going into reverse in housing. Only 30,000 homes were built last year.

That was a reduction on the year before and left the Government well short of the target. Planning permissions are falling. Planning permissions for apartments have collapsed. Last year, the Government said that it was going to build 12,930 social homes. It missed that target by 2,300. The key problems are not being tackled. Those problems are Government bureaucracy and red tape, a lack of viability, a lack of key infrastructure and a lack of serviced zoned land.

One of the big shocks is that in the middle of a housing crisis, so many construction companies are idle. Many are placing their staff abroad because they cannot work here. They say that no proper pipeline of work is coming through for them here, which is absolutely incredible. The planning situation in this country is mental. It is completely crazy. I heard about a 30,000-page planning permission application for a particular project and the fact that vans were needed to transport it. In the context of another planning permission application, four separate versions of the same plan were required in order to suit four separate agencies. The greater Dublin drainage project, the purpose of which is to help service 100,000 homes, has been in planning for the past ten years. It is now in judicial review again, and is likely to be tied up for many more years. In Ireland, there are 26 judicial reviews per 1 million people. In Britain, there are five per 1 million. Judicial reviews are becoming a national sport in this country.

The issuing of permits and licences in this country under the Government is the slowest in Europe. The tendering process under the Government is one of the slowest in Europe. This has not evolved out of thin air. It has been created by the Government. The lack of infrastructure is hammering the building of homes. Representatives of Uisce Éireann were before the infrastructure committee recently. I asked them how long it is going to take for Uisce Éireann to fill the gaps that are currently acting as a block to the building of homes. They said, proudly, that they will have it done by 2050. That is an incredible situation. At present, Uisce Éireann can hardly keep the water in the taps of houses in County Meath. Thousands of homes are waiting to be built in my county. There is a lack of electricity, water and roads, and that is the Government's responsibility.

I have a different view from those in other Opposition parties. The Government's plan is a tweaker's charter. In other words, it is a case of a little bit here, a little bit there, a grant here and a grant there. The Government does not have the ambition that is needed to fix this problem. When will it deliver the radical change that is needed?

As is often the case, I agree with the Deputy on some things and disagree with him on others. I will try to take him through that. Rents in this country are too high. That is why we have taken a number of measures to try to increase supply. I am of the view that when you increase the supply of housing, there is a demand-and-supply effect. I also believe that we need to do other things in the here and now. That is why we have taken the decision in the budget to extend the rent tax credit for the next number of years. It is also why we rolled out the rent pressure zones nationwide. When this Government came to office in January, parts of this country were not covered by rent pressure zones. Donegal comes to mind in that regard. We fixed that as well. I do not think many people thought this Government was going to do that. However, that was the decision we made.

The Deputy referenced a variety of statistics. I am not disputing them, but, of course, it is a case of lies, damned lies and statistics. The Deputy picked some areas of challenge in the context of the statistics. He referenced planning permissions and the like. I can reference the fact that completions are up and that we saw a huge number of commencements happen when we made the changes to development levies. Our job now is to work with industry to make sure that these are converted into actual homes for people to live in.

The number of first-time buyers is also up. The Deputy will accept that as a statement of fact. The cost of a home is expensive, but we have seen the highest number of first-time buyers this year since 2007.

I agree with the Deputy about the planning issue. Again, I would point to some reforms we have brought in that are bearing fruit. If we were having a debate in this House on this matter not that long ago, we would have been talking about huge backlogs in An Bord Pleanála, as it was then. We are seeing real progress with An Coimisiún Pleanála. There is real progress in decision times and the reduction in wait times. I am hearing that, and the Deputy must be hearing it.

It is still too slow. It is not meeting the targets.

I am not saying that we are there, but the position is much better than it was. I am putting the House on notice that this Government intends to bring forward legislation in respect of the delivery of critical infrastructure in an emergency manner. I remind people at home that we did that before. We did it in relation to Brexit in the context of port infrastructure. We did it in Rosslare and at Dublin Port. We certainly did it for temporary gas storage. It can be done, and we need to do it. Not everything can be classed as critical infrastructure, but there are major projects, such as those the Deputy referenced, that clearly are critical in nature. We will bring proposals to Government before the end of the year. We will bring proposals to leaders by the end of this month as well, because we need to make sure that where there are projects that are of national significance and there is common good, we speed up delivery.

I have significant concerns about the use of judicial reviews and environmental law. I cannot understand environmental law being used to slow down the delivery of wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants improve our environment. In Ireland and in Europe, there is overregulation in this regard. We need to make sure there is not a brass plating or a gold plating of regulation in this country. We also need to ensure that people cannot have an each-way bet with judicial reviews. The Deputy can expect changes from Government in that regard.

Uisce Éireann has made progress. It ran a successful public relations campaign in the context of looking for significant additional funding. I have said this directly to it. We provided that funding on the proviso that there will be a link between it and housing supply. Uisce Éireann cannot be the answer to everything. It has to empower developers involved in small or reasonably small developments in rural and regional areas to put infrastructure in place once it is to the Uisce Éireann standard. That has now been agreed and it will be in place by February.

It is quite incredible that if a farmer is building a slatted shed in Cavan, a person in Cork can submit an objection in respect of it.

Yes.

We have a Bill that would bring that to an end.

There is a massive issue with serviced land and serviced zoned land that has been ignored over the past while. The Government talks about an audit of that land. Is it not startling that the Government does not know how much zoned land there is in the country or how much serviced zoned land there is? The Tánaiste is saying that there is not enough, yet we have people at the head of county councils and local authorities saying that they have enough. It is incredible that we have had a housing crisis for 15 years and there is no agreement about where this zoned land is. There is serviced land that is not zoned residential. That is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to building houses quickly, and yet the Government still does not know where that is.

In the context of taxes, it is incredible that €3 billion worth of VAT was taken in from the construction of houses last year. Some €50,000 of the price of a normal house at the moment comprises VAT and other service charges. The Government reduced the VAT on apartments. Why did the Government not do that in respect of houses? There is a viability crisis. We have to make those houses viable. Why are so many builders at home sitting on their hands, unable to build in the middle of a housing crisis?

I am only smiling because the Deputy is the first voice from the Opposition that has actually suggested-----

There are different voices in the Opposition.

I really appreciate that because this united Opposition thing gets presented a lot, but there are different voices and different perspectives. The Deputy is the first Member of the Opposition who has critiqued the Government for not going further with our VAT reduction measure. The rest of them have slated us for doing anything at all in respect of it. That is a point of difference. When you are in government, you are trying to get these balances correct.

We made a decision that the acute viability issue related to apartments. We had to make a balanced decision about the composition of the overall package of what was available with regard to tax, and we continue to monitor that. We are encouraged by what we are seeing and by what the industry has said to the Government and to the Oireachtas housing committee in recent weeks.

On the issue of serviced and zoned land, with the residential zoned land tax, which has not been without challenge by farmers and others, issues which we are working through, as the Minister, Deputy Heydon knows, we have seen a significant increase in transactions. In other words, people are not sitting on residential zoned land. That is encouraging. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, with the Minister, Deputy Browne, has issued section 28, which is basically to instruct our councils to zone enough land for at least 83,000 houses. This is not rocket science. You have to over-zone because, obviously, not every zoned site converts into homes. It took a little too long for some local authorities to get that point. That is why the Taoiseach, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and I are meeting each of the local authorities' chief executives in small groups. We have met four so far.